What is the role of に in this sentence? Does それは彼の過去に translate to "That is in his past" or "That is his past". If it is the latter, then is it perfectly fine to say それは彼の過去 "That is his past" without に?

Alright I hate to make another thread to spam the board so I am just going to ask another question on the thread that I have made.

俺は腹が減ったんだけど. What is the function of んだ in this sentence?

I understand that when asking somebody a question you can use さむいんですか when you have a clue to the situation. In this case you are assuming the person is feeling cold, because you see that he/she is shivering. However I don't get what んだ is doing in this statement 俺は腹が減ったんだけど

「んだ」, or 「のだ」, means you're explaining a situation that might or might not be obvious. In the case of the sentence you asked about, without the 「んだ」 ending, the sentence is simply, "I've gotten hungry". With the 「んだ」 ending, it's explaining, something like, "(well, ya see...) it's that I've gotten hungry"...

amaravati wrote:What is the role of に in this sentence? Does それは彼の過去に translate to "That is in his past" or "That is his past". If it is the latter, then is it perfectly fine to say それは彼の過去 "That is his past" without に?

The problem is, that sentence no verb.

"Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself." -- Vilfredo Pareto

In Japanese they'll leave off the verb in casual statements, advertisements, etc. Just like we use sentence framents in the same way. This sentence probably only makes sense in context. What you've literally got there, according to the link I gave you is, "As for that [whatever the person being talked to has been talking about], in that guy's past". Whatever it was that actually happened in his past is unclear because we're not given a verb. If you can provide more of the surrounding context for the utterance, it would probably help people answer your question better.

Last edited by IkimashoZ on Sun 10.30.2005 3:31 am, edited 1 time in total.